This patent document relates to an image capturing device, and particularly to an image capturing device that automatically captures multi-angle product images.
The imaging of retail environments, specifically shelving, is an emerging area. For example, recognizing the types and presence/absence of products from store shelf imagery could provide key data to enable new retail services. A key input for recognizing products from store shelf imagery is multi-angle reference images of each individual product. Standard product images can be obtained from consumer packaged goods (CPGs) or organizations that aggregate merchandising data (such as GS-1). However, such images are generally limited to certain product categories/manufacturers and may not have the appropriate profile views of the product for the purpose of robustly recognizing them and extracting key information from them. These challenges and potential needs for new systems apply to both custom in-house and private-label brands.
In other applications, such as photographing evidence in forensics and proving ownerships for insurance purposes, there is a need to automatically capture multiple images of an article or product. Existing product image capturing devices and methods often require a significantly high number of steps to capture the information, and generally they are not easy to use. For example, many systems require a manual setup, calibration and/or user intervention when taking multi-angle product images.
This document describes devices that address some or all of the issues described above.